WordPress Hosting With WPEngine

Get 5 months free on Annual plans when using the discount code cyberwknd between the dates of 24/11/2016 - 28/11/2016

About WPEngine

WPEngine was founded in 2010 and was built to be the best WordPress hosting on the market focusing on speed, security, scalability and support. The company is based in Texas but to give good coverage around the world it has data centres in USA, UK and Japan.

Key Features

The key features of WPEngine is definitely speed and security, they pride themselves on being one of (if not) the fastest WordPress hosting on the market. As they are a company that focus primary on WordPress hosting they have optimized their servers to behaviour just with WordPress.

Scalability is another feature of WPEngine, it's packages are based on the amount of visitors you get each month therefore if you have 20k visitors a month you will go for the personal package. But what if one of your posts goes viral on Twitter or the front page of reddit you will suddenly get 100s/1000s of visitors on your server at the same time. If you go for a cheaper hosting company you will normally be on a restricted shared hosting server so if you suddenly get 1000s of visitors it will lead to the server crashing. I've personal had this problem when on shared hosting, Smashing magazine tweeted one of my articles and the server went down. WPEngine servers will scale automatically and will be able to cope with a sudden burst of traffic to your website.

Support is another feature that WPEngine prides themselves on, they understand if something is wrong with your website it can cause a lot of problems for you and your business. Ticket support is available around the clock and phone support available during certain periods of the day. Their support are very knowledgeable in WordPress and very quick to response to the problems.

Additional Features

Multiple Installs

WPEngine allows you to have multiple installs of WordPress as part of your same hosting packages, allowing you to have multiple websites installed when you move into the professional hosting package.

CDN

Again moving onto the professional package and you will have access to use WPEngine CDN to delivery your website assets for things like images, CSS and Javascript files. Having a CDN deliver this content will be done from multiple locations in the world, which ever is closer to the visitor ensuring it will be delivered in the quickest time.

SSL

With HTTPS now included by Google as a ranking factor, it's important for many blogs to have the HTTPS protocol. HTTPS is also needed if you take any form of payment details through your website. You can purchase an SSL from WPEngine for $49.99 a year.

Multisite

WordPress multisite allows you to host multiple WordPress sites on the same WordPress install these can be as sub-directories or on different sub-domains. On WPEngine professional package it will come as multisite ready allowing you to do this as part of your package costs. This is different to the multiple installs as the new WordPress sites will be installed on sub-domains or sub-directories.

GeoIP

WPEngine Business package comes with GeoIP enabled which allows you to serve different content to people based off their location. Allowing you to serve different content to people from Europe and different content for those in America.

Staging Site

One of the best features of WPEngine is the ease of creating a staging site to test any changes you make in a controlled environment before you push the changes live. For example if you want to try out a new design with your content you can put this onto the staging site before it goes live, allowing you to catch any errors before they go to the public.

When you create the staging site it will take a snapshot of the current live site and duplicate this for your staging site. You can only create one staging site at a time so make sure you do this just before you plan to go live to catch any last minute problems with the site.

Plans

WPEngine has 3 main hosting packages with the cheapest package starting at $29 a month ranging to $249 a month, after this you will need contact WPEngine to arrange a custom plan. This hosting price may sound like a lot but as you can see from all the features that's included you will see that the price is worth paying for.

PERSONAL$29 /MO.

PROFESSIONAL$99 /MO.

BUSINESS$249 /MO.

PREMIUM

ENTERPRISE

Visits/Mo.

25K

100K

400K

1 MILLION +

5 MILLION +

Installs

1

10

25

150

150

Environment

Shared

Shared

Shared

Dedicated

Dedicated

Local Storage

10GB

20GB

30GB

100-300GB

400GB-1TB

24/7 Ticket Support

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Live Chat From 6am-8pm CT

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Staging

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Transferable Installs

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

LargeFS

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

CDN

$19.99/MO.

Included

Included

1000GB Free

1000GB Free

WPE SSL

$49.99/YR.

$49.99/YR.

$49.99/YR.

$49.99/YR.

$49.99/YR.

Support 3rd Party SSL

-

Y

Y

Y

Y

24/7 Phone Support

-

Y

Y

Y

Y

Multisite Ready

-

Y

Y

Y

Y

GeoIP Enabled

-

-

Y

Y

Y

Strategic Account Management

-

-

-

Available

Included

Launch Readiness Assessment

-

-

-

Y

Y

Summary

There are a lot of advantages to using WPEngine they provide you with everything you will ever want from a hosting company the only downside I can see with WPEngine is the price. It's fair to say they are one of the most expensive hosting companies when you compare the amount of traffic to other hosting companies. But with WPEngine you certainly do get what you pay for. They are expensive because they are the best hosting company you can get if you have a WordPress site. Especially with the 100% uptime guarantee you know your website is going to be in good hands.

If your business is based on WordPress WPEngine are the best choice, you get daily back ups, daily malware scans, help if malware is found, speed and support to help maintain your site.

Plus they offer a 60 day money back guarantee, if you're not happy with the service they provide you can just close your account and get a full refund, so there really isn't any reason not to try them.